Why exactly are drugs illegal?

[I Push Buttons]

So I'd like to say that I respect your opinion. Children in abusive or neglected homes should definitely be taken care of and removed from those homes while the parents get treatment. However, this unfortunately already happens while drug use is illegal. Even in situations where the parents aren't abusive, neglectful or addicts, such as in the controversial issues where children are removed from homes where the parents have smoked pot. A 'zero tolerance' stance is equally as harmful.

To clarify, we shouldn't wait or encourage anyone to stay addicted when it's harmful for themselves or their children. Decriminalizing drugs wouldn't change that in my opinion.

Life can be definitely messy with drugs, and it already is with situations like alcohol. There are many homes that have been broken simply due to that. While I'm not saying that everything will be perfect and I certainly don't have all the answers, I still stand by my opinion that offering people a chance to recover instead of threatening them is a better solution. We should also be less intrusive in people's lives where no one is threatened or harmed. As for the benefits of education, this can be seen with things like smoking cigarettes, which to my knowledge, has been on the decline due to the abundance of education and awareness.

In any case, this is definitely something we need to discuss more of as a society. It doesn't feel like we have made any progress towards eliminating drug use and it seems to have caused more harm by forcing it into the black market.

Only we already do that. People aren't punished for being an addict, they are punished when caught with large quantities of drugs or driving while under the influence of drugs. There is no crime for being high.

All legalizing drugs would do is create even more addicts by virtue of more people using them due to no longer fearing legal repercussions for doing so. Not to mention many other potential unintended consequences. Many of the drugs you people advocate legalizing are incredibly addictive. Legalizing them (as well as legally manufacturing them, regulating them, and taxing them that comes with that) would make them FAR more expensive... People will still be as addicted to them. IE: Addicts will be even more likely to ruin their lives financially... Not to mention other potential increases in crime to finance their addictions, etc...

[purebalance]

to make money off of incarceration in private prisons, and also because it would be really awkward if the cia just started selling coke straight to consumers in america, instead of using a cartel as a go between.

Oh this garbage getting spewed again. Next will we hear about how prison is the new slavery for black people?

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You missed another effect; we've disproportionately jailed a specific segment of our population.

There isn't a good reason that stands up to scrutiny given the fact that it creates an unregulated market that concentrates power in criminal hands, costs us money jailing people who could be productive members of society (or even not productive-it would cost us less if they did nothing but collect welfare), and comes with a major opportunity cost given that we also cannot collect taxes on illegally trafficked goods.

Oh look there it is a few posts down.....

They're jailed because they commit more crimes.

[blankfaced]

Is this a joke question? Some are because they can be deadly if not consumed correctly or are abused. And not all drugs are illegal.

^ This. Drugs, cause great harm to the human body, even if used sparingly. The reason pot is being pushed to be legalized while the others aren't is because it doesn't do nearly as much damage as the others, even less than alcohol.

This has to be one of the saddest attempts to legitimately defend the drug war. So no one dies on alcohol or prescription pills? If you demonize one drug like you two do, then you're just pot kettling when you allow just as dangerous drugs (and even some times multiple times more) to be sold in mini marts.

[PACOX]

Im not sure if this has been said in this thread. Not reading 15 pages to find out. The illegal drugs, ie crack, heroine, cocain etc. Are listed by the FDA as schedual 1 drugs. What this means is they have very high abuse potential and zero medical value. This is why you see them as illgeal. Opiods, ritilin etc are listed as schedual 2 medications. Which according to the FDA means they still have high abuse potential but are legal for having medical benefits. Cannibus is a oddball. The FDA is pretty firm on thier stance on it but many states have passed laws at the state level that legalize it. It has medical benefits but the abuse potential is still really high. On that note however, ANY drug can be addictive in excessive quanities.

Its a bit more complicated.

Some drug or symptoms of the War on Drugs and and steady criminalization of drugs.

Take cocaine for instance. Cocaine wasn't always illegal or criminal. It used to be a wide spread drug that was used legally in a lot of products.

Without getting into the politics and all of that, it became illegal but not necessarily criminal. You'd get in trouble for it but it wasn't like law enforcement was going out of their way to crack down on it pre-War on Drugs. When something becomes illegal, prices go up though. So you had people who were addicted but only rich people could afford it. Not everyone hooked was rich so they resorted to crime to feed their habit. Then along came crack, a cheaper way to enjoy cocaine for a fraction of the cost, twice as addictive. A symptom of drug policy.

Crack comes along and even though its a derivative of cocaine, crack related charges were treated a lot more harsh than cocaine related offenses. Naturally, when law enforcement moves in, people move to more criminal means to get their fix. And without proper treatment, people aren't going to stop using just because law enforcement gets more tough. Part of what makes addiction...addition, is a irrational need and drive to fulfill the addiction. Crimes goes up as a symptom of criminalizing the drug without clear programs to actually get people off the drug(s).

I have a particular with pharmaceutical opiate and how they are handled/viewed by those who make drug policy. So there is no question that opiate have become an issue in the US. The issue is that blame isn't put on the source of the problem, policy makers, doctors, and insurance companies.

Opiates are pushed because insurance companies, some doctors, and policy makers make money off of every pill sold. Theyre no more than street dealers with an office. So less addictive alternatives such as cannibus as pushed aside in favor of stuff too strong for what they are being prescribed for. More innocent doctors are left with no alternative to prescribe opiate, tell your client to pop an advil which will probably do nothing or go to the extreme end and prescribe oxy knowing they are overkill and highly active. Patients stand no chance because they are given extremely potent and highly addictive pain killers but are educated enough about what they are taken (the whole purpose of requiring prescriptions) to know the dangers of it. They take a couple of oxys and get hooked without even trying. So you have these poor people who get hooked and either start lying to doctors, going to street dealers, or finding alt drugs to sate their addiction. You say why not just go cold turkey but addiction happens at the biological level, for some its like telling them to just stop eating.

So going back and to wrap up(this post would have been more clear if I had put more effort into it but it would've been 10x as long), a lot of the way drugs are classified as nonsense and don't do anyone much use except those making money at the top. They way they are schedule are less about how beneficial they are but how easily they are controlled to make money off them. Schedule 1 use is a symptom of schedule 2 drugs. I'm not saying the schedule 2s aren't beneficial, I administer drugs on the job and testify that a lot of them do wonders. But at the same some time I see see a lot mishandling of prescription drugs to where I see people develop dependices on stuff they shouldn't stuff they should've had in the first place. Then that person must either been weened off the drug or they seek less legal means to fill the void. Vicious cycle, a mid-range drug like cannibus could curb the opiate epidemic.

[wunksta]

Only we already do that. People aren't punished for being an addict, they are punished when caught with large quantities of drugs or driving while under the influence of drugs. There is no crime for being high.

I don't know what the situation in Ohio is, but in Texas yes you can be arrested and thrown in jail even for small amounts of marijuana or for being considered 'high'.
www.norml.org/laws/item/texas-penalties-2

All legalizing drugs would do is create even more addicts by virtue of more people using them due to no longer fearing legal repercussions for doing so.

I don't believe that to be accurate. Most people aren't going to go out and suddenly start doing every drug once it's legal, let alone become addicted to every drug. That's simply not the case and has not happened in other countries or even in states where marijuana is legalized for example. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-legalization/

Many of the drugs you people advocate legalizing are incredibly addictive. Legalizing them (as well as legally manufacturing them, regulating them, and taxing them that comes with that) would make them FAR more expensive... People will still be as addicted to them. IE: Addicts will be even more likely to ruin their lives financially... Not to mention other potential increases in crime to finance their addictions, etc...

Again, I don't believe that to be accurate. A large percentage of creating and distributing illegal drugs is ensuring that it's hidden and running protection for your operation. Look at businesses that are already existing that are able to sell drugs and they are not FAR more expensive.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/debrabor...arket-with-pot

People already become addicted and ruin their lives, yet there's no evidence that there would be a substantial increase in addiction if they were decriminalized or legalized. Some people already turn to crime to finance addictions, even legal addictions. That's not going to change or substantially increase. Instead of treating addiction as criminal behavior, we should be helping people that are addicted and allowing people to live their own lives when they aren't addicted.

To me, the benefits of allowing people to be free and moderate their own behavior far outweighs all the drawbacks for keeping drugs on the black market.

[cubby]

The fundamental problem with your entire thesis against the legalization of drugs is that you assume that the people who want them somehow can't get them because they are currently illegal. All your issues with the legalization of drugs stem from this basic assumption - that somehow legalizing cocaine will amount to a huge rush (see what I did there?) on the market.

And you couldn't be more wrong.

And yet social service and other human service costs would rise as you would naturally have plenty of amounts of drug users who would not 'use drugs responsibly' and if they have children then the government would then merely be transferring where they would be having to spend money as a result of drugs. You would also still have most of the same medical costs required to save drug users who were in danger of overdosing, only now we would be hiring people to babysit drug users in safer public drug use facilities, oh and you would also be paying to create property where some drug users could have a public place to shoot up with OD staff employed there. See how our government is suddenly not making that much more money from legalizing drugs? I could go on to explain more financial hoops and hurdles that would add to these if drugs were legalized, but I think I've solidly made me point.

Social services would have the same problem they have now, completely and fundamentally underfunded. You're arguing that some magical influx of users (and then abusers) would overwhelm their services with new addicts. I've got news for you, they are already overwhelmed. Nothing new would arise from more drug users, except more drug users, and at that point, the government might finally start to take seriously the notion of recovery, and how to help those that suffer from drug addiction.

"...the effects of drugs... would actually be eliminated by making them illegal"? Lol wow now you're assuming a lot by that. First of all, no. Second of all, no. One of the things I mentioned that people lose nowadays when caught using illegal drugs were jobs. Even with legalized drugs there would be plenty of normal jobs and an exceptionally high amount of professional careers that would still throw your sorry ass out of the profession if you were a drug user, especially if you were using hardcore drugs. High intensive skill careers that depend on you being very focused on the job at hand (surgeons, lawyers, mechanical engineers (say those in charge of building/repairing/maintaining various important public/commercial/military vehicles) would never let someone who was an active meth or cocaine user screw up their business, reputation, and profession by taking massive risks that included hiring such drug addicts (even if it was legal). You also have the education profession, especially the early childhood educational profession, that would never knowingly hire drug addicts to work anywhere near children, legal drugs or not. If they found out you would still lose your job. It would also mean that in most of these careers' educational programs would also have punitive measures of some sort, including possibly being dropped from the program, if they discovered you were a 'legal drug user'.

The majority of effects from drugs on employment currently being illegal in society would be nullified if they were made legal. You saying "no" twice doesn't change the logic of that point. Of course, your point that certain positions will always rely on drug screens is very valid, but those same positions currently have drug screens for legal drugs. So nothing would change in that capacity. Conversely, those jobs that currently required drug screens would be dramatically affected - because those drug screens would be moot. Likewise, all the non-intensive skill positions currently hire drug addicts all the time - we just don't know it because we don't test for those drugs that are legal (alcohol is a perfect example).

So while you might want to think that legalizing drugs wouldn't eliminate the occupational hazards of random drug screens, it in fact would.

You are also painting everyone the same in order to try and pass off what you perceive as a valid argument. For example, you are again assuming and stereotyping anyone in a relationship to be like the same types of couples that wouldn't break up or divorce the other if they found out that their significant other started using drugs. News flash, there would still be scores of people that would never want to be involved in drugs, whether they were legalized or not. So, no the risk of losing relationships would still be there in a world with legalized drugs, it just wouldn't be that way for every couple.

I'm not sure I understand your point here, other than saying legalizing drugs wouldn't have any real effect on this category (relationships). Help me out here if you would, I'm just not following your line of thinking, but I would like to. My bad, not yours.

[Spiral Mage]

Because like others said, many of them are extremely dangerous.

However, one officer was advocating the legalization of many drugs because he believes if companies are able to legally make them and invest research into them, they will be able to generate cleaner, safer versions of them that provide the same highs without the potentially lethal side effects that are atleast, in part, the result of how they are currently made.

If all drugs were legal though, would we see much higher usage and therefore much higher abuse?
What would happen to society in such a situation?
I personally don't even drink.
But what would other people do?

There's separate debates between if these drugs, made legal, could be safely produced, vs. people using them safely. People are generally horrible at using things safely.

[I Push Buttons]

I don't know what the situation in Ohio is, but in Texas yes you can be arrested and thrown in jail even for small amounts of marijuana or for being considered 'high'.
www.norml.org/laws/item/texas-penalties-2

Those small amounts are misdemeanors and you pretty much guaranteed not to be punished unless you have been arrested multiple times before.

I don't believe that to be accurate. Most people aren't going to go out and suddenly start doing every drug once it's legal, let alone become addicted to every drug. That's simply not the case and has not happened in other countries or even in states where marijuana is legalized for example. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-legalization/

1. That is weed.
2. That is a survey.
3. It was a survey of children, it was still illegal for them to use marijuana. So how exactly does that counter my argument that legalizing drugs would increase their usage by people for whom it was legal to use?

Also according to this report:
http://www.rmhidta.org/html/2016%20F...e%20Impact.pdf

- Youth past month marijuana use increased 20% two years after legalization (2013/14) compared to two years prior to legalization (2010/11).
- College age past month marijuana use increased 17%... (Same time frames as above)...
- Adult past-month marijuana use increased 62%... (Same time frames as above)...

So is this government program (Rocky Mountain - High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) lying?

Again, I don't believe that to be accurate. A large percentage of creating and distributing illegal drugs is ensuring that it's hidden and running protection for your operation. Look at businesses that are already existing that are able to sell drugs and they are not FAR more expensive.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/debrabor...arket-with-pot

People already become addicted and ruin their lives, yet there's no evidence that there would be a substantial increase in addiction if they were decriminalized or legalized. Some people already turn to crime to finance addictions, even legal addictions. That's not going to change or substantially increase. Instead of treating addiction as criminal behavior, we should be helping people that are addicted and allowing people to live their own lives when they aren't addicted.

To me, the benefits of allowing people to be free and moderate their own behavior far outweighs all the drawbacks for keeping drugs on the black market.

Once again, that is weed. Anyone can cultivate plants in the ground and they have in recent years, hence the influx of product. That is a lot different from manufacturing a chemical. Which, if legalized, will require far more rigorous quality control... You know, since doing things wrong can literally kill people/cause a lot of legal liability.

[Deleted]

Because like others said, many of them are extremely dangerous.

However, one officer was advocating the legalization of many drugs because he believes if companies are able to legally make them and invest research into them, they will be able to generate cleaner, safer versions of them that provide the same highs without the potentially lethal side effects that are atleast, in part, the result of how they are currently made.

If all drugs were legal though, would we see much higher usage and therefore much higher abuse?
What would happen to society in such a situation?
I personally don't even drink.
But what would other people do?

There's separate debates between if these drugs, made legal, could be safely produced, vs. people using them safely. People are generally horrible at using things safely.

While many drugs are in fact dangerous to the individual, multiple studies have suggested that Alcohol is actually one of the most dangerous substances not the the user, but to people around the user. Alcohol induced crime is way higher than any other illegal drug (if you take murders due to drug dealing/ trafficking out of the equation because those crimes are only due to the drug being outlawed, not the drug themselves)

In fact, here's a fun fact. MDMA, LSD, Mushrooms and a long list of psychedelic drugs are actually less harmful to the individual than alcohol is. Hell, some psychedelics actually had medical / therapeutic use before they were outlawed.

[kail]

If all drugs were legal though, would we see much higher usage and therefore much higher abuse?
What would happen to society in such a situation?
I personally don't even drink.
But what would other people do?

We'll take heroin as an example. Legalize it and sure, it's recorded uses will spike severely. Many who take it stupidly will probably go down the spiral, lose their jobs and family, etc. etc. etc. It's happening today. I say let society work itself out, those who are stupid or desperate to abuse such dangerous substances already had the flaw in their psyche.

Millions have lost their lives to tobacco, families have been hurt. Millions have lost their lives to alcohol abuse, families have been hurt. To advocate banning only select dangerous substances simply because some are far more popular is hypocritical. Legalize them, regulate them, and better yet tax them (to cover the likely medical expenses they will be in need of), it's their lives and no one else's.

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Maybe because bleach isn't an addictive recreational drug that makes people feel good to the point of abusing it.

If you're going to be snarky, don't make such a stupid argument.

Permanent markers? Strong glue?

[Deleted]

We'll take heroin as an example. Legalize it and sure, it's recorded uses will spike severely. Many who take it stupidly will probably go down the spiral, lose their jobs and family, etc. etc. etc. It's happening today. I say let society work itself out, those who are stupid or desperate to abuse such dangerous substances already had the flaw in their psyche.

Millions have lost their lives to tobacco, families have been hurt. Millions have lost their lives to alcohol abuse, families have been hurt. To advocate banning only select dangerous substances simply because some are far more popular is hypocritical. Legalize them, regulate them, and better yet tax them (to cover the likely medical expenses they will be in need of), it's their lives and no one else's.

Until doctors start exploring other ways to deal with pain, heroin will always be on high demand in this country. Heroin is just like any other opiate expect you don't need a doctor's prescription and it's much cheaper.

When people get hooked on their prescriptions prescribed by their doctor and one day that prescription goes away or they just can't afford the pills anymore, they turn to heroin because opiate withdrawal is no joke.

The heroin/opiate epidemic is a fault of our own healthcare.

[kail]

Because half the population is too stupid to handle drugs and it's illegal to discriminate based on intellectual merit. Thus it's illegal for everyone

Sounds like we are just trying to deny Darwinism.

[Zantos]

Ya, that's great and all, but what's better, using the money we spend arresting and jailing people, or taxing the trade and using the money getting addicts treatment? Remember, portugal legalized drugs and has a lower use rate than the US because they get addicts treatment.

This is not a good statement. Do you understand just how Highly Addictive some of these things are? You're playing with fire. You want to treat them after the damage is done and Hope they don't relapse vs preventing them from potentially getting addicted to it. Those addicts then turn to crime and illegal activities to provide cash to support their addiction.

Do you know what the rehab rate is?Not even 25% of those who successfully complete rehab stay clean for five years. That is a ton of money Wasted to getting them treatment rather then trying to prevent the problem to begin with. You don't try to fix the damage after a fire, you try to prevent a fire to begin with. Not to mention, free will is a thing. You assume that we would be providing treatment. Problem is, they have to Want it first.

To OP: These are Highly addictive substances. They do major damage to someone. Just doing some of them once is enough to draw someone into a Lifetime battle of fending off the addiction. Of course they are illegal. They have no benefits and cause people to turn to crime just to stay high. People then tend to go to harder stuff to keep chasing that high. Then they experiment and you get horrible drugs that turn them into literal zombies while they are high. The dangers alone are reason enough to make them illegal. Its not perfect, but it at least keeps some people off of them and makes it frowned upon to do it in public.

[Zeek Daniels]

i think there is a negative effect that certain illegal drugs cause that can have an effect on community if they were legal. The addictive properties make it even worse. Its basically the government trying to protect you from yourself. Although why they havent banned smoking even tho the long term effects are pretty clear is because $$$. So do you want to get large amounts of money from citizens and companies to fund your government or do you want less government funding. I say make drugs legal that way it would open up the job market. All the drug addicts would get unemployed because they are not suitable to hold a job.

[kabalas]

Because the Dea would be made redundant. And those people at the top want to keep their fat paychecks.

Instead most should be legalized. Hell I'm even in favor of legalizing heroin and using the tax dollars to build facilities to treat addicted people who want treatment.

It already basically is legal when you consider the pain killer epidemic. Albiet heavily controlled. I avoid it because you never know what it's being cut with on the street. Oxycotin and the like are basically govt approved heroin that you know what your getting.

In the end people are going to do what they want. Might as well tax it and help those that want help vs throwing them in jail and leaving them to suffer.

Plus what would the cartels do if we didn't have to go through them for our drugs?

I realize it can be an unpopular view and its just a quick response on a message board. I also believe if I want to do some hard drugs responsibly in the safety of my house, I should not have the govt sticking their nose in. Use those resources to put stricter controls on firearms and education instead of demonizing someone in their own home.

[zenkai]

So I've been thinking on this topic for a while to be, for the past few years there has been a surge in research chemicals and synthetic drugs that either mimic the effects of illegal drugs or are monocularly identical to illegal drugs. Some have caught the attention of the media and been outlawed, but only about 1>% of these chemicals have actually been outlawed. Many of these chemicals are more dangerous for human consumption than the drugs we spent billions of dollars to keep off the streets and some aren't as dangerous.

The point is what exactly is the point of the War on Drugs? We incarcerate people for this and only 2 things have happened. 1 is the obvious which is making a black market controlled by cartels (which everyone knows). The second is we have created another market of research chemicals that is growing to soon become just as profitable as the illegal drug market. These research chemicals are flooding the American streets and young people are buying them thinking they are whatever the person selling them says they are (mdma, coke, lsd etc). Because there are hundreds of different chemicals on the market right now that mimic every popular street drug right now and are perfectly legal to buy online. And most of these chemicals haven't been around long enough for people to actually know the health risk of taking them unlike illegal stuff.

This goverment "war" is backfiring very quickly.

My city has an epidemic right now, people are ODing left and right and many are dying to Heroin, it's so bad we are running short on the drug that counters oversose.

Worse a cop pulled someone over and someone had some in their carpet, he touched it and he went into an overdose and had to be rushed to the hospital

Pot is one thing, it's natural but fuck making drugs legal, drug users are a burden on society. There is no such thing as a casual user.

[NineSpine]

My city has an epidemic right now, people are ODing left and right and many are dying to Heroin, it's so bad we are running short on the drug that counters oversose.

Worse a cop pulled someone over and someone had some in their carpet, he touched it and he went into an overdose and had to be rushed to the hospital

Pot is one thing, it's natural but fuck making drugs legal, drug users are a burden on society. There is no such thing as a casual user.

Opioids come from a plant, just like pot does.

There are literally more than 100 million casual drug users in this country.

What you need to do, and I know this is difficult for you, is stop concerning yourself with what people want to do in their free time, and believing that the government is your tool to bludgeon people into whatever broken, sick moral code you have developed for yourself.

[smokii]

in one word: Nixon.

[Machismo]

Drugs are illegal for two reasons. First, people didn't like it, so they made them illegal. They wanted to force their beliefs onto someone else. Second, it allows for the government to create additional outliers within a society, and profit from the enforcement and restriction. They get to take more money from the populace, and swear they are doing a good job with it. It's a scam.

[NineSpine]

Drugs are illegal for two reasons. First, people didn't like it, so they made them illegal. They wanted to force their beliefs onto someone else. Second, it allows for the government to create additional outliers within a society, and profit from the enforcement and restriction. They get to take more money from the populace, and swear they are doing a good job with it. It's a scam.

Piggybacking on this: Drugs were generally made illegal when a minority someone wanted to go after was using that drug. For opioids, it was the Chinese. For pot it was Mexicans.